Lessons from the Consumer Packaged Goods Industry
The telecom industry has always been innovative, but the innovation has been mostly incremental. Over the past century, we had telegraphs, then wired telephones, then wireless phones, then cell phones, and now we have smartphones. Up until the smartphone, the iterations were not fully reimagined products, just significant improvements on the existing products of the era. Today, we have high-speed internet and smartphones that put most of our communication and entertainment literally at our fingertips. Never has the telecom industry had to reinvent itself to the extent that it does today.
Telecom companies are now essentially media companies, not phone and internet companies. To accommodate all of these changes and to rapidly adapt, telecoms are engaging in an unprecedented number of mergers and acquisitions. A combination of these factors means telecoms need to constantly rethink their products and positioning. They also have to build and market new products—and they have to do it quickly. Continue reading
This year Uber and Lyft formally entered the healthcare market to offer rideshare services to nonemergency patients for transportation to scheduled doctor appointments. Patient no-shows are a prevalent problem in the US, with an estimated 
It is not a secret that energy utilities need to focus on strengthening customer relationships through brand and product efforts as brands like Tesla, Apple and Google are increasingly building consumer mindshare in the energy space. The good news is that utilities can reap dividends almost immediately by tapping into consumer demand for new energy technologies via a utility marketplace. Our 
Facebook is 10, and they celebrated by releasing a new video app. If you’ve been on Facebook this week, you have undoubtedly seen it—it’s responsible for the “My Facebook Movie” posts that have been ever-present on the site the past couple of days. I’ve seen two dozen of them so far among my circle of friends. And every one of them has been perfectly charming—a beautiful (and often touching) little summary of that user’s life as seen through the lens of Facebook. The videos are spreading like wildfire on the site (and, frankly, I’m amazed that all that video sharing and viewing hasn’t crashed the servers yet).
